“Hey Kenny, did you see BJ’s text about going back to work?” This was in May 2020. After receiving a message from the general manager of the wine bar where we worked as line cooks, I called each of my coworkers to see how they felt about returning to the kitchen after sixty days of stay-at-home orders and restaurant shutdowns. We had gotten paid for the sixty days because of the government’s Paycheck Protection Program, but now that the money was gone, the owner wanted us back at work.

The text from BJ said that we would be starting up again at the end of the week and that the shift schedule was posted. That was it. No guidance. No procedures for coming back. In contrast, there were nine pages of regulations posted by the county health department on how to operate a restaurant safely. Distance requirements. Cleaning measures. Workflow changes. I read them because I wanted to help keep my colleagues safe. Also, I was personally petrified of going back inside the airless kitchen where we normally worked with less than a foot between us — sharing knives, slipping gloveless hands into vats of prepped vegetables and meats, wiping off the cutting board only when there was a natural break in orders.

So I called all the other line cooks and asked them what they thought about going back. They each said they were afraid. We were collecting unemployment, but if the restaurant called us back, we had to go, otherwise we’d lose both our unemployment insurance and our job. The extra government assistance the owner received was running out, and the pressure to resume profit-making was shifted to us.